Born
December 1, 1985 · Kansas City, Kansas, USA
Birth name
Janelle Monáe Robinson
QUOTES:
I feel myself becoming the fearless person I have dreamt of being. Have I arrived? No. But I’m constantly evolving and challenging myself to be unafraid to make mistakes.
[observation, 2014] I’d be honored to experiment more with holograms and maybe make a whole band – but I love my band. I wouldn’t want them to be holograms.
I’ve never viewed myself as “just” a musician or singer. I’m a storyteller who wants to tell untold, meaningful, universal stories in unforgettable ways. I want to do it all, study it all and find my place in it.
I had a strong visceral reaction to the Moonlight (2016) script, partly because I felt I knew all of these characters. I grew up with a drug dealer like Juan in my neighborhood who was a mentor to local young people. I had a family member who was addicted to crack, like Paula. Chiron himself reminded me of my little cousin – they were all characters I could relate to from my upbringing. And I’ve played the role of Teresa in real life: my family and friends always have a shoulder to lean on with me.
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December 1, 1986 · Brighton, England, UK
INTERVIEW:
I went back to Australia to do a show called The Beautiful Lie (2015), which is a retelling of ‘Anna Karenina’ in a six-part mini-series – a modern, contemporary version.
I was the understudy to the understudy in a year-two production of ‘Big Chief Red Feather.’ The boy who had the lead broke his arm, and then the understudy got chicken pox. And I loved it. I got to wear the most feathers in my headdress.
I love playing characters with different accents. It’s a lot of fun.
It’s always nice to have somebody with the same accent when you’re working in a foreign country.
I’m the youngest of three sisters. We were always performing plays for each other.
I’ve learnt that there’s acting for film, acting for theatre, and acting for an audition.
It’s an easy dis when people don’t want to like me and want to say that I’m a brat. You have people who only want to be your friend because of that, or you have those who say, ‘Oh, Zoe thinks she is so cool cause her dad is…’
[on being denied an audition for The Dark Knight Rises (2012) – Nylon magazine, August 2015] They told me that I couldn’t get an audition for a small role they were casting because they weren’t ‘going urban’. It was like, ‘What does that have to do with anything?’ I have to play the role like, ‘Yo, what’s up, Batman? What’s going on wit chu?’
[on being denied an audition for The Dark Knight Rises (2012), Nylon magazine, August 2015] In the last Batman movie [The Dark Knight Rises], they told me that I couldn’t get an audition for a small role they were casting because they weren’t ‘going urban’. It was like, ‘What does that have to do with anything?’ I have to play the role like, ‘Yo, what’s up, Batman? What’s going on wit chu?’.
I’m a moviemaker, not a documentarian. I try to hit the truth.
A friend of mine says, “Art’s like a shark. You’ve got to keep swimming, or else you drown.” Keep bouncing around. People always ask me, “What’s the plan?” There is no plan. I go to what fascinates me next.
When I first said I wanted to make a film about Rome and cast Russell Crowe, everyone had a good old snigger. I thought, “You wait.” They’ve done the same with Kingdom of Heaven (2005) and Orlando Bloom. I now say, “Take a look at this.”.
Balian [Orlando Bloom‘s character in Kingdom of Heaven (2005)] is an agnostic, just like me. I am not fighting another holy war here, I am trying to get across the fact that not everyone in the West is a good guy, and not all Muslims are bad. The tragedy is that we still have a lack of understanding between us, and it is 900 years since the Crusades. We have never truly resolved our differences.
Audiences are less intrigued, honestly, by battle. They’re more intrigued by human relations. If you’re making a film about the trappings of the period, and you’re forgetting that human relationships are the most engaging part of the storytelling process, then you’re in trouble.
Show business is great, but when you’re in a movie that made more than $120 million, the perspective changes. I’d never had the experience of being in a movie that so many people found funny. After the enormous success of There’s Something About Mary (1998), I was able to command much more money and I got recognized more. But the reason for all this is only because the movie made money, not because I’m any more talented or better looking.
Every actor is out there trying to get parts, auditioning, going to acting class and creating a network of people who are in the same position you are. I couldn’t sit around and wait to get work, because it wasn’t happening. I would just try to create my own projects with friends who were filmmakers.
I think most actors have incredibly big egos, but they’re also incredibly insecure. That’s a bad combination. I include myself in this group. For whatever psychological reasons, we want and need approval from everybody in the universe, though we also think we’re totally unworthy of it. We need to validate ourselves through our work.
(On his most memorable pre-acting job) For a summer I was a busboy and waiter at a place in New York called Cafe Central, which was a hip, trendy restaurant in 1985. First I bused tables and was really bad at it. I’m clumsy at carrying plates and glasses. You had to have a swiftness and a facility for carrying stacked objects. That wasn’t me. I was interested in who was coming in, because it was an actor hangout. I would want to see who was talking to whom and what they were saying – basically, stuff you shouldn’t do as a person of service. Dudley Moore came into the restaurant and I was really interested in what he was saying. I kept going over to make sure that he and his companion had enough coffee and that their plates were cleared. I think I really annoyed him. I kept changing the ashtrays with that move where you put the clean ashtray over the full ashtray and remove both and put back the clean ashtray. I think I did that one time too many. Then I became a waiter there, and dealing with orders and the kitchen was worse. It prompted me to get acting work.
[in 1977] This year I’m a star, but what will I be next year? A black hole?
On the plus side, death is one of the few things that can be done just as easily lying down.
[asked if he liked the idea of living on on the silver screen] I’d rather live on in my apartment.
[on films] I can’t imagine that the business should be run any other way than that the director has complete control of his films. My situation may be unique, but that doesn’t speak well for the business–it shouldn’t be unique, because the director is the one who has the vision and he’s the one who should put that vision onto film.
Basically I am a low-culture person. I prefer watching baseball with a beer and some meatballs.
There are worse things in life than death. Have you ever spent an evening with an insurance salesman?
Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.
I do the movies just for myself like an institutionalized person who basket-weaves. Busy fingers are happy fingers. I don’t care about the films. I don’t care if they’re flushed down the toilet after I die.
Most of the time I don’t have much fun. The rest of the time I don’t have any fun at all.
[on working with Martin Sheen on Badlands (1973)] Martin Sheen was extraordinary. He’s a very gifted man. He’s from a working class family, so he had all the moods down for the film. And when he wasn’t before the cameras, he was helping in the background, wrapping cables, packing up light reflectors. One day I found him going around a gas station and picking up aluminum snapback lids from soda cans. He knew they didn’t exist in 1959.
[on The New World (2005)] I knew it would have a slow, rolling pace. Just get into it; let it roll over you. It’s more of an experience film. I leave you to fend for yourself, figure things out yourself.
[on his future] There’s a good many pictures I’d like to make, we’ll see how many I’ll be allowed to make.
[on his methodology] I film quite a bit of footage, then edit. Changes before your eyes, things you can do and things you can’t. My attitude is always let it keep rolling.
[on the cinematography of Days of Heaven (1978)] With Néstor Almendros, we decided to film without any artificial light. It wasn’t possible in the houses at night, but outside, we shot with natural light or with the fire. When the American team was saying, ‘This is not how we should proceed,’ Nestor Almendros, very courageously insisted. As we filmed, the team discovered that it was technically easier, and I was able to capture absolute reality. That was my wish: to prevent the appearance of any technique, and that the photography was to be processed to be visually beautiful and to ensure this beauty existed within the world I was trying to show, suggesting that which was lost, or what we were now losing.
Democracy should be practiced not every six years, but every day.
Talent survives and remains while beauty is diluted.
Histories are to educate, so that we understand better for ourselves and for motivation.
I believe fervently in the nature, in truth and imagination, I believe in the blood, in life, words, and motivations.
I think we’re all political, in a way. What has happened recently in my case is that, fortunately, I’ve been able to get more in touch with the things I can change and do.
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